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Liberty readies for Londonderry move

By APRIL GUILMETUnion Leader Correspondent

LONDONDERRY — Five months after getting the town’s blessings to relocate to Londonderry, Liberty Utilities is now setting up its state headquarters in the former Blue Seal Feed corporate offices at 15 Buttrick Road.

Renovations to the two-story office building, which sits on five-acres adjacent to Route 102 and several nearby medical offices, have been ongoing since spring, company spokesman John Shore said.

About a year ago, Liberty Utilities initially opened its state headquarters in leased offices on the former Cisco Systems site on Northeastern Boulevard in Salem.

“We’d hoped all along to get our own permanent space,” Shore said on Thursday, noting that the Salem office would remain open during the transitional phase.

On July 8, members of the customer service department began moving into the Londonderry site.

“They’ve settled in nicely,” Shore said. “Now we’re working on transitioning some of our other departments.”

Those other departments include human resources, administrative, accounting and energy efficiency, he noted.

“We’ll slowly be moving everyone in between now and this coming April,” Shore said. “It’s very exciting to have customer service representatives that work in our service territory because our plan from the beginning has been to be the local, responsible utility for our customers.”

Fifteen new customer service representatives were recently added to the workforce, and the company is currently in the process of hiring 11 temporary workers to help fill seasonal demands.

Shore said the company expects to hire another dozen more permanent employees between now and the end of the year. “These will be full-time positions across various departments in the company,” he noted.

Liberty’s new billing, telephone and online self-service systems will be up and running this fall, according to the organizations’ website.

Salem’s electrical operations center, located on Lowell Road, will remain open with no plans to relocate the linemen and engineering crews that are based there.

Once the transition is complete, Shore said the Londonderry facility would house between 120 and 130 employees, with the majority of those employees having transitioned from the Northeastern Boulevard site.

The Londonderry Planning Board approved project plans in early February, after granting the company a waiver for the traffic impact analysis since the site is still being used as a corporate office and no major alterations to the building were proposed.

Liberty’s purchase of the property, at the cost of $1.8 million, was finalized last spring.